Arizona weekly enterprise., 1887-09-24
THE ART OF PRINTING.
How Near the Ancients Came to Learn
 ing It-HistoricaI Facts.


 ing It-Historical Facts.
 The world has many times come near to printing, and just missed it. The an- cient Assyrians stamped their records deep in bricks or cylinders of clay, using 3 raised wood block, or possibly separate characters. A wooden hand stamp dis covered in tomb at Thebes left upon the Egyptian bricks for which it was used, in raised hieroglyphics, the name of Amenoph-possibly that very Pharaoh who was the taskmaster of the lsraeliteS which was cut into it. The Greeks not only cut exquisite seals, leaving raised impressions upon wax, but used also the contrary process of engraving maps upon smooth metal plates, from which they might have taken ink impressions Eff they had only thought of it. ''-
 The Roman potter used, it would seem, movable types to stamp his vessels with the owners name or a contents label; the private loaves of bread sent to the public oven were stamped with an owners mark; cattle and slaves were 'sbranded" by heated stamp; the s'signum of Ce- elias Hermias" in raised brass, which saved that Roman citizen the trouble of "llti1ls3 LID A1lAiO Ol Ol lCttl uOW JO | write it, as well as several incised brass l stamps which seem intended for use with ink, are in the British museum. Quin- tilian suggested the use of a stencil to teach Roman school boys to write, since | by following its lines with their stylus they could trace the letters; Cicero and other Latin writers come very near the idea of printing types when they speak of the absurdity of expecting an intelligible sentence from chance mixing of engraved letters; Pliny, indeed, speaks of 'sa cer- tain invention by which Marcus Varro proposed to insert in his books ''the i'm ages of 700 illustrious persons, thus .'saving their features from oblivion, :" l and making them known over the wide world, :" which sounds very like our wood cut printing.
 Yet, so far as we know, all Roman books were made by slave copyists, so cheaply that Horace complains that his books were too common, while Martial s first book of epigrams could be bought for six sesterces GA cents) in plain and five denarii (S0 cents) in fine binding, and the daily newspaper of Cicero s Rome, the Acta Diurna, which contained local news and gossip of marriages and divorces, as well as acts of the senate, : was probably made in like manner. The Emperor Justin, who could not write, used stencil to sign his name, and mer- chants had trade marks to the same pur. pose.
 The Codex Argenteus, or Silver Book at Upsala, Sweden, which dates from the Sixth century or earlier, must have hat its silver letters stamped on its purple vellum one by one, since some of the let ters are upside down, and such engraved letters were in use by many ealigrapher of the middle ages to outline initial letter for their illumination. Woven fabrics o silk and of linen were printed in colore' inks from hand stamps in Italy possibl as early as the Twelfth century; indeed Breitkepf holds that the Egyptians thu printed cloths, and the Mexicans an,
 Polynesians bad perhaps like practice The printing press itself was rather al f adaptation of the wine press or chees press used in all countries than an inven . tion, and the playing cards and bloc books of the middle ages, made from en , graved wooden blocks, which precede f the use of movable types, were probabl printed on it.-R. R. Bowker in Harper ' Magazine.